We tend to picture saints as heroes capable of extraordinary, unrepeatable deeds. The story of Isidoro Zorzano points in a different, more homely direction: that of a holiness played out in the daily care of others, day after day, through ordinary gestures, until life itself is given for them.

Isidoro was not a hero. He was a kind and generous engineer, passionate about his work though not especially brilliant, with a tenacious will and an almost childlike enthusiasm for mountain excursions. From a young age he had a simple, steadfast devotion that he never abandoned.^[1] When the collapse of the bank where his family had invested their savings was added to the early deaths of his father and older brother, he had to take responsibility for his mother and sister.^[2] He was, at heart, an ordinary man, with the same problems as anyone else.

He had been born in Buenos Aires in 1902, the son of Spanish emigrants, and returned to Spain as a young child. A former schoolmate of Josemaría Escrivá, on 24 August 1930, he was one of the first to commit himself to living his Christian vocation in the middle of the world, according to the spirit of Opus Dei, which his friend had just begun.^[3] He worked for the Andalusian Railways in Málaga and only occasionally came up to Madrid. Death threats he received there, for being a committed Catholic, hastened his transfer to the capital.^[4] When the war broke out on 18 July 1936, Isidoro was 34 years old and had been back barely a month.

He could have stayed safe. The house where he lived with his mother and sister was under the protection of the Argentine Embassy. For the first two months he remained confined to it: his name and description had been passed on to the militias in Madrid from Málaga. But at the end of September, with a different haircut, dark glasses, and very precarious documentation, he went back out into the streets for something he considered more important than his own safety.^[5]

Josemaría Escrivá — whom his people called "the Father" — was in mortal danger because he was a priest, as was anyone who sheltered him.^[6] After moving several times, he managed to find refuge in the psychiatric clinic of Dr. Suils.^[7] It is there that Isidoro's hidden work reached its heart: he obtained bread and wine so that the Father could celebrate Mass, and when Mass was over, he received the consecrated hosts to bring Communion to the other members of the Work, their families, and other acquaintances.^[8] The Eucharist thus became the secret thread running through his journeys: what he carried through the city, along with letters and food, was Christ himself. For some — prisoners or those isolated in an embassy — that Communion could be, for weeks at a time, their primary link to the sacraments.

Those young men, scattered and in very different situations,^[9] needed to receive not only news, but, as he put it, "the Father's heart."

One episode captures his whole way of being. Vicente Rodríguez Casado had taken refuge in the Norwegian Embassy, cut off from everyone. Getting close was risky: the militias kept watch over the surrounding area. Although Vicente asked him not to come so often, Isidoro would smile and reply: "God is never outdone in generosity." He thought it the most natural thing in the world to go and bring him the warmth of the family. Only later did Vicente learn that those visits were being recorded and that Isidoro was searched upon entering.^[10]

To stay or to flee?

Around January 1937, it became clear that the war would be long and that surviving in hiding in Madrid was not enough. Escrivá, who did not want to reach safety alone, but together with all his spiritual sons (as he called the first members of the Work) began preparing an evacuation to the other zone through diplomatic channels.^[11] Thanks to José María González Barredo, several of them found refuge in the Honduran consulate, waiting for a departure that seemed imminent.^[12]

Then came the decisive test for Isidoro. At the end of March, the Argentine Embassy offered to take him and his family out of Madrid. Assuming the evacuation of those in the consulate was already as good as done,^[13] he could have left and rejoined the Father later, out of danger. He consulted Escrivá, who left him entirely free, and he decided to stay. Why? Because many people remained in Madrid: José María Hernández Garnica in prison, Vicente in the Norwegian Embassy, Miguel Bañón and Manuel Sainz de los Terreros on their own, and also Dolores and Carmen — Escrivá's mother and sister — and all their families. Isidoro gave up the chance to find safety so as not to leave them alone, accepting the hunger and fear of a besieged city and perhaps risking his life.^[14] The evacuation would ultimately be delayed by months, and his care extended to those taking refuge in the consulate as well.

Growing on the inside

From that point on, Isidoro became a vital link holding that scattered family together. Each morning he picked up mail at the legation and ran errands: he obtained clothing, food, a medicine, a dictionary. Since they had no watch, he gave them his own. He sent letters out of Madrid on behalf of those who entrusted them to him, and received those arriving from Levante and Daimiel: Francisco Botella and Lola Fisac had been asked to always write to his address, so as not to compromise anyone else.^[15]

The afternoons had a different quality. Isidoro visited one person after another, distributed Communion, prayed with them, and went over pending plans. From the end of March he began meeting at his home with Manuel Sainz de los Terreros, José María Albareda — who would request admission to the Work in September 1937 — and a friend of Albareda's, Tomás Alvira; and in April he set himself the goal of seeing them every day, because — as he noted — "we feel the need for this unity more and more." He put special effort into one particular act of care: when notes from the meditations that the Father was preaching in the consulate arrived, he would discuss them with Sainz de los Terreros and Albareda, and sometimes those discussions gave them material for prayer; he would then take them to Bañón and explain them to Vicente in person, since it was not wise to carry papers when visiting him. While the war kept them apart, they fostered one another's lives of prayer.

In his diary he left a record of what those meetings gave him. He noted that their conversations always revolved around the Work, to the point where they barely commented on what was happening in the war; and that, almost without realizing it, they would spend more than an hour meditating on the evils surrounding them, "just as the first disciples would have done when they were so persecuted." The Work, he concluded, was helping them "understand true charity and live Christian fraternity."^[16]

The end of the war and the end of Isidoro's story

In December 1937, Escrivá finally managed to cross the Pyrenees into the other zone, accompanied by a small group; it was not easy for him to accept leaving without all his children.^[17] Isidoro stayed behind, as he had chosen to do nine months earlier,^[18] and threw himself especially into caring for the families. He looked after Santiago, the Father's younger brother — whom Escrivá had asked to go back home to his mother and sister rather than attempt the dangerous border crossing^[19] — as if he were his own: he enrolled him in school and gave him language lessons. He stood by Álvaro del Portillo's father to the end, since he could not leave the consulate without danger. And when Ricardo Fernández Vallespín's father died, Isidoro went immediately; later, when his sister fell ill, he saw that her treatment was not right and found her another doctor.^[20]

All of this was taking a toll on him. By then he weighed 48 kilograms.^[21] We do not know how much he weighed when the war ended, after further months of deprivation, though one can assume it was even less.^[22] On the day Escrivá returned to Madrid, 1 March 1939, Isidoro went to meet him and soon had to take to his bed to recover. On 1 May he returned to his job with the railways. At the end of 1940, the first symptoms appeared of the illness that would lead to his death in 1943: Hodgkin's lymphoma, now a curable disease.

He had carried his task to its furthest limit: nearly nine hundred days sustaining those who had remained in Madrid. He was not the only one who remained faithful — others held on as best they could, in prison or in hiding, all of them sustained by Escrivá — but a singular role fell to Isidoro. Drawing inspiration from the vigorous fatherliness he saw in the Father, he gave himself each day for men he had barely known for four years, and for their families.

That self-giving had its cost: he, who could have found safety, stayed and spent himself completely. But thanks to his constant presence, those men knew firsthand that they were truly a family. That is the legacy of Isidoro Zorzano: a fidelity made of small gestures through which many recognized, without grand words, something of the fatherhood of God.

^[1] Cf. T. A. McDonough, Ordinary Life, Extraordinary Living, Scepter Publishers, New York 2024, pg. 10-11 (hereafter, OLEL).

^[2] Cf. OLEL, pg. 10.

^[3] In June 1936 there were twenty-six members of Opus Dei, and Isidoro was the most senior: cf. J. L. González Gullón, Escondidos, Rialp, Madrid 2018, pg. 11ff. (hereafter, ESC). There were 21 men and 5 women. Next in seniority were five professionals who had joined between 1932 and 1934 (Juan Jiménez Vargas, José María González Barredo, Manuel Sainz de los Terreros, Ricardo Fernández Vallespín, and Miguel Bañón) and fifteen university students.

^[4] Cf. OLEL, pg. 59.

^[5] Cf. OLEL, pg. 93-94.

^[6]During the war, 6,806 priests and religious were killed: cf. A. Montero Moreno, Historia de la persecución religiosa en España. 1936–1939, BAC, Madrid 1999, pg. 760–763; cited in ESC, pg. 38.

^[7] The Father entered Dr. Suils's clinic on 7 October 1936: cf. ESC, pg. 73.

^[8]Cf. OLEL, pg. 96.

^[9] Cf. ESC, pg. 102-113.

^[10] Cf. OLEL, pg. 99.

^[11] Cf. ESC, pg. 132-133.

^[12] Between 13 March and 7 April 1937, Álvaro del Portillo, Josemaría Escrivá, his brother Santiago, Eduardo Alastrué, and Juan Jiménez Vargas found refuge in the Honduran consulate: cf. ESC, pg. 159ff. The evacuation was expected to take place between 8-10 April: cf. ESC, pg. 235.

^[13] On March 29, Isidoro noted in his diary: "As for the evacuation, it is done" (ESC, pg. 235).

^[14] Cf. OLEL, pg. 130. From the summer of 1938, foreign nationals were also required to justify their presence in Madrid.

^[15] Cf. ESC, pg. 245-246.

^[16] Cf. ESC, pg. 245-246.

^[17] Those who crossed the Pyrenees with him were Juan Jiménez Vargas, José María Albareda, Manuel Sainz de los Terreros, Miguel Fisac, Tomás Alvira, Francisco Botella, and Pedro Casciaro: cf. ESC, pp. 311–313.

^[18] Cf. OLEL, pg. 118.

^[19] Although Santiago had been taking refuge with him at the Honduran consulate, Escrivá had decided that he should return home to his mother and sister and not undertake the dangerous attempt to cross the border.

^[20] Cf. OLEL, pg. 122.

^[21] Cf. OLEL, pg. 116.

^[22] Cf. OLEL, pg. 126.